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Letizia Ragaglia

Born in Montebelluna in 1969, Letizia Ragaglia majored in museology and contemporary art at the universities of Florence and Bologna as well as at the École du Louvre and the Sorbonne in Paris.
She worked as a freelance curator specializing in projects for public spaces on behalf of various Italian and international institutions. She was a member of the jury for the 54. Venice Biennale and a member of the jury for the Vienna-based project KÖR (Kunst im Öffentlichen Raum / art in public spaces) from 2010 until 2013.
Since 2009, Ragaglia has been director of the Museion in Bolzano, where she has curated solo exhibitions of Monica Bonvicini, Isa Genzken, Andro Wekua, VALIE EXPORT, Carl Andre, Claire Fontaine, Paweł Althamer, Rosemarie Trockel, Danh Vo, Klara Lidén and Ceal Floyer.
She lives and works in Bolzano.

Vincent Honoré In the mission statement of the museum, one reads: “Museion works as an international research laboratory and as a commissioner of works of art […]. The aim is to be interdisciplinary and these efforts can be seen in the fact that not only figurative art finds its place at Museion, but also architecture, music, performance, film and theatre all have a space in the yearly programme.” I am curious to know how structurally interdisciplinarity informs your programme? How do you articulate it? And, importantly, why is it still relevant to be interdisciplinary?Letizia Ragaglia The fact that visual arts cannot be perceived in isolation from other forms of art is not a new discovery. Reference to such statements can be found in ancient periods as well as in the present. However, I see contemporary art as a hybrid construction – in a positive sense – which not only connects different cultural disciplines, but also integrates disciplines that are far beyond the cultural field. In my opinion, therefore, a museum of contemporary art has to underline and to create different links that move through the present-day cultural scene.
Museion’s “core business” is still visual art, but we want to show that rigid barriers cannot be erected. This Summer, for example, a young Italian artist, Luca Trevisani, was invited to create a video for our media façade: he, in turn, invited MK, a dance company, giving rise to an ensuing fruitful collaboration with the Bolzano dance festival. This Fall, moreover, we will present a show, in which Carol Bove, an American artist, interacts with the well-known architect Carlo Scarpa: how can a museum avoid considering architecture and, more particularly, reflecting on the display of works? In our show When Now Is Minimal. The Unknown Side of the Sammlung Goetz we hosted concerts with minimal music and we also pursue collaborations with designers such as Martino Gamper, who continuously move between art and design. These are just a few examples of how we articulate “interdisciplinarity,” although I must admit I’m not a fan of this word. Regarding the importance of interdisciplinarity: it is a mirror of how contemporary culture moves.

2. Danh Vo, We the people, Museion, 2013

V.H. There are different models of what a museum should be, of what its missions should be. What is your vision, in 2014, of what a museum should be?L.R. I can only answer for a museum of contemporary art, a museum which works predominantly with living artists and which, therefore, differs slightly from other museums that deal with artists and objects from the past. Although it is true that these other kinds of museums also constantly re-enact their collections and put them into a dialogue with the present, this process is accentuated in a museum for contemporary art, where the scientific work on the collections is continuously related to collaborations the museum has with the artists invited to create/produce new shows. Is the traditional museum dead? I don’t think so: a museum must constantly question its own role and, even if the years of institutional critique are over, it must remain aware of its public task and try to keep up with the times, providing new inputs to the traditional tasks of conserving, researching, exhibiting and communicating.

3. Klara Lidén, Invalidenstraße, Museion, 2013

V.H. I particularly appreciate a question asked by Nikolaus Hirsch: “who are the authors in the construction of institutional space?”. Who are the authors of Museion?L.R. Last year, Museion invited Carol Yinghua Lu and Liu Ding as guest curators and they created a very interesting show, Little Movements. Self-practices in Contemporary Art. The show analyzed different individual practices in the field of contemporary art and pointed out the importance of individual movements/actions. At the same time, the show gave us the chance to go through each different individual practice in our team, from the security guards in the exhibition rooms, to the accountant and the secretary. Each employee made a presentation to the public on a separate occasion and offered a glance into their own, special task within the “Museion machine:” for me, it is all of those people that are the authors of Museion.

4. Paweł Althamer, Polyethylene, Museion, 2012

V.H. Who do you speak to? How would you describe the persons visiting Museion: a public, an audience, actors, spectators, clients?L.R. That’s a tricky question! In 2014, the guest curator of Museion is Pierre Bal-Blanc. We will talk about him further on in relation to the PIANO collaboration. I invited Pierre Bal-Blanc because I saw his show The Death of the Audience at the Secession in Vienna. Among the many inspirations I received from that show, I read between the lines that nowadays there is not one single public, but a number of different ones. At this point, I would also like to quote Félix González-Torres, who once said that one (i.e. the public) cannot look at an artwork without considering his or her political, social, economic and sexual background. I would never use the word “clients” nor “spectators” or “actors”: audience and public is fine, but much more important than the definition itself is the fact that I/we really believe that it is very important to make the museum accessible for everybody. We have high, even “elitist” contents, but we want everybody to share them with us, therefore we offer a large variety of mediation services, that can be accepted or ignored. I think that one should never underestimate his or her public! And if you keep in mind Félix González-Torres you have to go further and consider that your public may also come from non-western cultures or, for example, that elderly people may have different needs than younger ones.
Furthermore, I have a dream: to eliminate the word “comprehension.”. We want to be there for people who want to engage and have an experience. This involves delving much farther beyond our rationality.

5. Museion, Media façade: Michael Fliri, the unseen looks like something you have never seen, 2011

V.H. PIANO intends to create a network of art spaces working together, exchanging and interacting. Why did you decide to join the project and how are you participating in it?L.R. I have to be sincere and explain that Museion had already thought about a collaboration with Pierre Bal-Blanc and the CAC Brétigny before the possibility of the PIANO platform arose. Once we heard about that, though, we were obviously enthusiastic about collaborating in a wider network. I strongly believe in exchanges and collaboration with other institutions, especially if the partners share needs and mission-statements. As a guest curator, Pierre Bal-Blanc has done a lot of research on our territory and brought his perspective from outside in order to make us perceive our context in a different way. Thanks to his excellent skills, he has managed to produce a “local” exhibition of international relevance. And I think that the fact that the show is present on the PIANO platform has added value to it.